High Costs and Hidden Inefficiencies of Managing Your Own Server

Monday October 29, 2018

Kim StevensProduct Specialist

Managing your own server requires a significant, ongoing investment from your practice — bothfinancially and timewise. Whether your server goes down from anatural disaster or through experiencing a plumbing mishap, you’re left with a nonfunctioning practice, and productivity comes to a complete halt.

In earlier days, a dental office having a server was pioneering. Today, having a server has become risky. Server shutdowns and hacking are obviously critical threats, but have you stopped to consider other inefficiencies that have been killing your productivity?

Incompatible equipment slows you down more than you think.

Do all of your systems, tools and equipment integrate with each other, in every operatory?

When servers and/or their programs decide to stop working, the entire practice comes to a halt. Sometimes it’s so disruptive the rest of the day has to be rescheduled. A compressor breakdown feels similar.

How this can cripple your workday:

This delay immediately triggers a backlog of appointments.

Your staff now has to try and make up for the lost time by moving faster, calming irritated patients, and scheduling appointments creatively, adding a sense of urgency and stress to your practice.

Patient satisfaction is at risk; no one wants to spend extra time at the dentist, or feel like a procedure is being done by a dental professional playing “catch up.”

One glitch can backlog your whole day.

Many servers, that are not even outdated yet, respond to a regular Windows update by freezing up or crashing, forcing practices to resort to using a computer on wheels or a laptop to remote into the software in order to post anything or take X-rays. They may even go back to the old films and processor just to get through the day. Often an IT professional is needed, and the cost is almost always expensive.

Little things add up, in a big way.

Smooth integrations between programs and applications stop the multiple clicks through multiple pages throughout the day to get to the information you need. That information might be stored in separate in programs or separate computers/hardware altogether. Cutting down the number of clicks and pages it takes to get to patient history, for example, can give you a significant amount of your day back when all of that time is added up.

With all of the technologies you might be utilizing, including phone systems, appointment scheduling, two-way patient texting, insurance processing and payments — wouldn’t it save so much time and effort if they were all truly integrated without the worries server controlled practices encounter?

Pro-tip: When you sign up with Curve, you can benefit from our trusted partner,Bluefin Payment Systems, which integrates with Curve seamlessly.

Save time with cloud-based dental software.

With Curve Hero, your integrations live in the cloud, streamlining your work and enabling you and your staff to work remotely. Web-based dental software upgrades are done overnight, so the end user doesn’t experience a disruption to the business, which affects productivity and profits. Whenever you log in to use the software, you have immediate access to the latest and greatest features and enhancements.

Traditional software requires installation on every computer in your business, which takes time. After installation, the software will need to be configured. That takes more time. With a cloud-based solution, all you need is a username and a password. Click. Done.

If you’d like to learn more about moving your practice to the cloud, please reach out to us at 888.910.4376, or email us at sales@curvedental.com.